TV drama from South saturates black market in North Korea, bringing hope, and risk

SEOUL -- Chilling reports in early November that Pyongyang had publicly executed
scores of citizens -- some for the crime of watching South Korean videos -- seemed
to mark a disturbing turn in the dictatorship of Kim Jong Un. But if history is
any guide, even the threat of death is unlikely to quell North Koreans’ hunger
for illicit entertainment from south of the border.

“The spread of South Korean media -- above all, South Korean videotapes and
DVDs -- inside North Korea might be the single most important development of
the last ten years,” said Andrei Lankov, a history professor at Seoul’s Kookmin
University.

Constant
surveillance, heavily guarded borders and thorough indoctrination in North
Korea have made it one of the world’s most secretive and least understood
countries. But the “iron curtain” which once sealed off 24 million North
Koreans from the rest of the world is frayed, thanks to the spread of illegal
cell phones -- and the ease of obtaining South Korean pop culture.

The
so-called “hermit kingdom” isn’t airtight anymore, thanks to private markets
which sprang up after the collapse of state rationing 20 years ago. Chinese DVD
players and flash drives -- used to watch pirated TV shows -- are so cheap,
even impoverished North Koreans can afford them.

So
North Korea’s hottest entertainment is now made in Seoul, by Pyongyang's
arch-enemy, South Korea. Consumers of illegal videos live not just in
privileged Pyongyang nor in the provinces bordering China -– where most of the
videos are illegally recorded -- but across the country, even in less-accessible
inland regions.

According
to defectors, high-ranking North Korean cadres are not just consumers of the
South’s entertainment, but also serve as smugglers and distributors of the contraband
videos.

“People who have higher positions are more likely to
watch,” said scholar Lankov. “But common people are watching as well.
Technically, it’s illegal (but) you can buy your way out.” He reckons
three-quarters of North Koreans have access to South Korean shows.

The titles available are limited; chosen by small
entrepreneurs for their broad appeal. TV series and soap operas -- not serious
public affairs or highbrow fare –- are the most common offerings.

“These are not documentaries about medieval history or
nuclear physics,” said Lankov.

Among
the millions of North Koreans hooked on South Korean dramas was Hyeonseo Lee, a
young defector who fled the North in 2008 to join the nearly 25,000 North
Koreans who risked imprisonment, and their lives, to reach the freedom and
affluence south of the border.

“Because
of drama(s), many North Koreans left North Korea these days,” she said told CBS
News earlier this year at her college campus in Seoul. North Koreans, she said,
are “curious about South Korea. They want to come here because what they learned
(from North Korea propaganda) and what they saw (on TV) is completely
different.”

After fleeing to China and then South Korea, Lee
made a harrowing journey back into her homeland to extract family members. As
her mother set eyes on the South Korean capital for the first time, she was
stunned by something that Seoul’s residents take for granted: traffic.

She had always assumed the car-clogged avenues in
the television dramas were fiction, arranged by collecting every car in the
country in order to shoot a scene.

Actors on a set during the filming of a South Korean television drama.

CBS

South
Korean entertainment has demolished Pyongyang’s propaganda about an
“impoverished” South, says Dongseo University scholar B.R. Myers. “It’s
becoming clear to the North Koreans -– even though they don’t watch South
Korean news -- just from watching South Korean junk culture, that (South
Koreans) have no interest in Kim Jong Un at all. They’re perfectly willing to
keep living under what the North Koreans would think of as ‘Yankee Rule.’”

Kookmin University’s Lankov agrees. “The North Korean
government doesn’t tell its people anymore that South Korea is a destitute
colony of U.S. imperialism.” Stories of South Korean prosperity are reinforced
by word-of-mouth reports via cross-border trade with China.

Not
that it’s hard to compete with the dry crop reports, staged photo ops and
histrionic news readers standard on North Korean domestic TV. “If you think
it’s boring now, you have to see what it was like 20 years ago,” notes Myers.

But
North Korean TV falls especially flat beside the multi-billion-dollar
entertainment juggernaut known as “Korean Wave” -- South Korean pop music,
movies, TV shows and other pop culture churned out for domestic and export markets
since the 1990s that has successfully stolen a significant share from Hollywood
in many Asian markets.

“Korean
dramas actually have very dramatic storytelling and the characters within them
are extremely attractive,” says hit producer Yeongseop Kim. “So there is an
addictiveness to them. Once viewers are sucked in, they can’t get out!”

The
syrupy sentimentality of Korean entertainment appeals to viewers across East
Asia, said Kim, an executive producer for South Korea’s SBS network. But for
North Korean fans –- delighted to watch programs in their native language –- Kim
said there’s an added hook:

“North
Korea is a very closed society without individual rights,” he said. “But in our
dramas, all the characters are able to speak their mind.”

While
many in South Korea celebrate the vicarious thrill of freedom offered to their neighbors
to the north, Myers worries that soap opera glasnost could encourage Kim Jong Un
to behave more recklessly.

“The
North Korean regime cannot explain to its people why the South Koreans do not
want to be liberated by North Korea. And this is the cancer, so to speak, that
is eating away at the North Korean state.

“We
should not be rubbing our hands in glee when we see this happening, because
this is precisely what is making the regime behave so belligerently. It
desperately needs to shore up mass support.”

A
soap opera revolution in North Korea is highly unlikely. But the smuggled TV
shows have helped created new skeptics -- in a country where the regime used to
monopolize the message.